He studies me. Predatory. Patient. “Alright. I like a girl with ambition. Come back in one week. We’ll assess the portfolio.”
“One week? You said—”
“I said two weeks if the market cooperates.” He smiles. Dead teeth. “One week for the first assessment. Take it or leave it.”
I take it. What choice do I have?
***
The longest week of my life, I filled it with a couple of clients. Two high schoolers who don’t mind washing their hair at home and bringing their own supplies. They don’t mind sitting on the floor of the small room. They also don’t have the money to pay over fifty a head. It takes six hours each to braid the micro-extensions they want, and the going rate would be four times as much in a real salon. Some places charge ten times what I receive, but only in certain neighborhoods.
The locks are so shitty that I sleep at night with a knife under my pillow and the table wedged against the door, hiding my license and my last two hundred in a sanitary pad wrapper. No one steals those. I don’t sleep. I plan. The shop. Riley Miller Beauty. Clean. Simple. Mine. I sketch the floor plan on the backof intake forms. Three chairs. Shampoo bowls in the back. Plants in the window so it doesn’t look like a trap.
Every morning, I wake up and check the stash. Every night I count it again. Seven days. I dress carefully. Black jeans. Boots that can run. A hoodie under my thrift-store peacoat. I take the T to Dudley and walk the last six blocks with my shoulders back and my hand on the pepper spray in my pocket. Fake it till you make it. Or till they bury you.
The same door. The same kid. He won’t look at me. “In,” he says.
I step inside. The door locks behind me. The apartment feels different. No music. No smoke. Just Dante, sitting on the couch with my empty envelope in his lap.
“Riley.” I can’t read his smile. “Sit down.”
I don’t sit. “Where’s my money?”
“Invested.” He spreads his hands. “Market took a hit. You know how it is.”
“There is no market. You said you’d triple it.”
“And I will. But investments take time. Years, maybe.” He stands. He’s taller than I remember. Broader. He moves with terrifying calm, his face unreadable. “Meanwhile, you got debts. I had to pay my boys to flip it for me, pay for security. Interest.”
“I don’t owe you anything. I gave you ten k.”
“True, and I was investing it, I heard about your little auction that got busted up, and then I got to thinking.” He steps closer. “Pretty, young, virgin.” His eyes crawl all over me. “You know what that’s worth long-term? More than ten grand. More than thirty. You’re an annuity, Riley. A retirement plan.”
My hands curl into fists. Audacity is a weapon, Mikhail said. Don’t dull it by pointing at yourself.
I use it.
I spray the pepper spray into Dante’s face.
The crack of his backhand is louder than a gunshot. My head snaps sideways. The floor rushes up and slams into my cheekbone. White pain cracks through my skull. I taste copper. Blood. Heavy footsteps. He’s standing over me.
“You stupid bitch,” he breathes. “I’m gonna enjoy using you before I turn you over to my friends.”
My hands scrabble for something, anything. A glass ashtray. My nails. I will claw his fucking eyes out before I let him—
The door caves in.
Not opens. Explodes. Wood splinters. The frame shatters. A boot withdraws, and then Mikhail Kutuzov fills the doorway like a nightmare unleashed.
Black coat. Gray eyes. Gun in his hand.
Two men behind him. Then three. Then the room is full of Russians—hard jaws, harder eyes, dark clothes that swallow the light. The kid who let me in is on his knees with his hands behind his head. No one made a sound. They move like smoke.
Dante freezes.
Mikhail looks at him. Then at me. His expression doesn't change. His silence is more terrifying than shouting.
He shoots Dante in the kneecap.
